Via Dr. Benny Peiser at The Global Warming Policy Foundation:
New Sea-Level Study Divides Climate Researchers
For the first time, researchers have reconstructed the rise in sea level over the last 2000 years. Their conclusion: Never before have sea levels risen as fast since the beginning of industrialisation. But critics fault the study with resting on shaky foundations. They see a major problem of the new study in the fact that it is ultimately based only on the finding from the coast of North Carolina. That could be too limited for a statement regarding global developments. “This study is therefore not suitable at all to make predictions,” says Jens Schröter from the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research. –Marcus Becker, Spiegel Online 21 June 2011
Who knows what the sun will do? I think it would be fair to say that in the past predicting solar behaviour has been little more than educated guesswork. I am reminded of a bold statement made in 2004 by the National Center for Atmospheric Research in the United States. It said that the next solar cycle would be 30 – 50% stronger than the previous one “…according to a breakthrough forecast using a computer model.” The sun does seem to be entering a period of low activity – the first of the space age. It’s a fascinating time for solar science, and a challenge for science journalism. –-David Whitehouse, The Observatory, 20 June 2011
As the great global warming scare continues to fade away, the real problem is that our politicians have so much collective ego invested in this delusion that, even when hell freezes over, they will still find it impossible to admit they got it wrong. –-Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph, 19 June 2011
Why can’t climate scientists just bring themselves to admit that we haven’t even yet begun fully to understand the cause of climatic change? –Ross Clark, Daily Express, 18 June 2011
Well if 1 tree in Yamal can work why can’t the coast of North Carolina stand in for the entire world?
It isn’t like coast lines rise and fall in different places at the same time. So one place could see land levels rise and just a few miles away they could see land levels decline. I mean that never ever happens anywhere. /end_sarc/
Well what a suprise, Mann thinks its worse than we thought and its all our fault, didn’t see that one coming, no sir not at all. I was going to draw the comparison with Yamal but I see LamontT has beaten me to it! Curse you sir. 🙂
What was wrong with the Jelgersma paper that presented sea level changes in the last 10,000 years (first reported by Shepard et al 1956) and was presented at the Imperial College Symposium in 1966?
From astronomy sources I am very familiar with – and speaking of earth water/sea level – aside from WHEN oceans appeared on earth no scientists or geologists or so called Global Warming “expert” have any idea of HOW MUCH WATER is in present day earth. Geologists have only a rough idea of the amount of water in earth’s mantle with estimates ranging from as much as 10 ocean masses down to a bit more than one ocean mass. The actual amount affect everything related to water/oceans discussed here and into the future profoundly.
It wasn’t the coast of North Carolina. It was two points on that coast.
So yeah, this is Yamal II.
I heard this mentioned as headline news on german radio last night (ARD german equivalent of the BBC).There was absolutely no mention that this study was restricted to the coastline of North Carolina. Absolutely shocking.Dangerous times indeed.
Mann’s sea level paper conveniently stops before sea level rise stops…..
They picked two North Carolina locations, Sand Point and Tump Point that showed what they wanted.
The most obvious one to use would have been Wilmington, North Carolina.
But Wilmington shows no sea level rise at all since the 70′s.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/scientific-bullshite-deepest-in-at-least-2100-years/#more-32885
The Corps of Engineers and University of Florida both said they could find no sea level acceleration,
and actually found de-celeration…………..
http://www.jcronline.org/doi/full/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00157.1
LamontT says:
June 21, 2011 at 12:03 pm
“Well if 1 tree in Yamal can work why can’t the coast of North Carolina stand in for the entire world? ”
Mann made a terrible mistake – and that for a scientist with his experience! He forgot to obfuscate the scarcity of samples! It worked so well with Yamal; why oh why did he not use the same technique here? It would have been so easy to get all kinds of proxies into the mix, then run it through decentered PCA or some other Mannian grinder to arrive at a predetermined conclusion, and another classic would have been born…. /sarc
One tree, one beach, what’s the diff?
cirby is exactly right. I was dumbfounded when I saw the story that they didn’t immediately assume subsidence and take pains to prove otherwise. Unless, of course, they couldn’t prove otherwise.
On a more serious note I just want to shake my head in amazement. I know that people don’t learn from history and repeat it over and over. But still it amazes me to watch it happen in front of me. I know that for years there has been a story around in science to teach a lesson in checking ones assumptions. And it has to do with 19th century science. Back then the geologists assumed that the ocean was a constant and they could measure land level changes relative to the ocean. At the same time the oceanographers assumed that the land levels were constant that they could measure ocean level changes in relation to land levels.
Well somewhere either in the late 19th or early 20th century, I forget which, some of them were talking and the assumptions came up in conversation and everyone was shocked to discover that the thing they used to measure changes in their specialty wasn’t a constant.
The story stuck around and I heard it in the mid 80’s in college as a warning about making assumptions with regard to your science. It appears that sometime since then this lesson has been forgotten.
Just last week we had the Colorado Sea Level Research Group changing their models to represent land level changes something they should have known about given that this story comes straight out of their field. They should have known it. And now we have Hanson using his two points and no indication that he took land level changes into account.
I guess the more things change the more they stay the same.
You people are too simple. Scientists are capable of things like this. I know one who counted the number of grains of sand in a thimble and with the assistance of a range of computer models he was able to define with certainty exactly how many grains of sand exist in the world. And by the way, the number is at it’s highest level in history due to the the increase in erosion that we are experiencing as a result of global warming.
Wil says:
June 21, 2011 at 12:20 pm
Earth’s total volume and mass continues to increase as we sweep through space and collect whatever tiny particles of space debris (including water) which are attracted into our gravitational field. That certainly has some effect on sea level, however minuscule.
Wil says:
June 21, 2011 at 12:20 pm
“From astronomy sources I am very familiar with – and speaking of earth water/sea level – aside from WHEN oceans appeared on earth no scientists or geologists or so called Global Warming “expert” have any idea of HOW MUCH WATER is in present day earth. Geologists have only a rough idea of the amount of water in earth’s mantle with estimates ranging from as much as 10 ocean masses down to a bit more than one ocean mass. The actual amount affect everything related to water/oceans discussed here and into the future profoundly.”
Hey, Wil. Good post. I assume from your comment you are also an astronomy buff, so here’s one for you. Since water is derived from oxidation of hydrogen, why all essoteric origins for Earth’s water; comets. ice ball collisions, etc in the astronomy publications I read. Has anyone ever postulated that the H was burned right here on (or in) the Earth during its composition. Either the H or the O had to be here first and the other arrive later, or be somehow separated and mixed later, but once they were here simulaneously the result is a forgone conclusion. Some rocket engines work that way, no ignition required. In that scenario, during the formation of the planet, water could be significantly greater in quantity than just what is in the mantle allowing the mantle water to be “refreshed” now and then or continuosly for that matter also ultimately affecting sea level as well. Unfortunately my geology is confined to rock collecting and a few amateur geology publications so I am at a disadvantage in this arena . If Earth was a gas ball with a rocky core at some point, one could visualize circumstances under which the water developed right here in giant fireball events.
“Newsbytes: not everybody believes to new Mann sea level study”
That headline doesn’t make any sense. Did you mean “in” instead of “to”?
In time more studies will be done using similar methodologies, and these will either confirm or disconfirm the recent findings. This is how science works, is it not? There are other studies available now which are confirming of this study, however. It is the rapidity of the change which is especially concerning along with other changes in the marine ecosystems. (temperature, acidity, loss of biodiversity, each of which have been observed, measured and reported in peer-reviewed papers.)
Is North Carolina somewhere near to the rest of the world, perhaps?
As far as historic sea levels go, anything more than a century and a half is based on various proxies. What is important to us is what the sea level is doing now and what it was in the immediate past when direct measurements exist. For that purpose the paper by Chao, Yu, and Li in the 11th April 2008 Science is most important and often neglected by “climate” scientists. when they talk about sea level rise. These authors went through all extant records of sea level rise in the twentieth century and discovered that water held in storage does have an influence on observed sea level rise. In order to correct for the influence of this water held in storage they obtained records for more than 70 thousand impoundments built in the world since the beginning of the twentieth century. They used these data to correct the reported sea level measurements for the influence of the known effect from impoundment and discovered that as a result the sea level curve, which had many irregularities in it, became linear. This corrected curve was linear for at least the last eighty years and possibly more. It\s slope was 2.46 millimeters per year. It is reasonable to assume that anything that has been linear this long is not about to change anytime soon. From the slope of that curve we can calculate a sea level rise of 24.6 centimeters or just under ten inches for a century. There are various recent satellite measurements that cluster around that and show some irregularities but they don’t tell us whether they have applied the corrections for water held in storage or whether they even know about it. As far as alarmism about sea level rise goes, I will stick to Chao, Yu, and Li. Their database includes part of the early twentieth century warming, the lack of warming from the forties to the nineties, and the step warming from 1998 to 2002, none of which made a measurable dent on their sea level curve.
Let’s see… North Carolina, a state whose coastline is routinely scoured by hurricanes, each of which removes and redeposits both beaches and the sea floor.
Yeah, like that won’t have an effect.
Benny beat me to it. I was going to post on the Spiegel piece tomorrow.
It should be noted that the German scientists are warmists.
Mann and Rahmstorf are getting desperate – the writing is on the wall.
http://notrickszone.com/2011/06/21/eu-parliamentarian-europe-climate-policy-dead-end-china-india-australia-waving-goodbye/
Hugh Pepper says:
June 21, 2011 at 1:10 pm
There are other studies that confirm this? Where?
Others in above posts have listed a large number of studies that disconfirm Hansen’s conclusions.
As to the other items you claim, temperature, acidity and loss of diversity. Could you please post references to peer-reviewd (not pal-reviewed) studies by reputable scientists (That excludes papers written by any advocacy group.)
Note to mods: See Mark Wilson’s note re: headline. “to” does not seem to make sense. Use “in” or “the” instead?
[Thanks, fixed. ~dbs, mod.]
Well, you only need one thermometer to prove global warming. Place the thermometer in a large desert as far as possible from human habitation and carefully record the night time minimum temperatures. After a period of about five years, to allow for seasonal variations, any trend should be a good indicator of global changes.
At the beginning of the end of the LIA (1620-1640) LOD rose rapidly, about 8ms in 3 decades, corresponding to a sea level rise of 80cm, presumably due to melting of grounded ice. While steric sea level rise (due to thermal expansion) has no measurable effect on LOD, eustatic rise (due to ice melting) certainly does, to the tune of about .1ms per centimeter. And whereas LOD variation is cummulative, its measurement is very accurate. And yet for the past 40 years, in spite of all the claimed rise in sea level, LOD has not increased, which leads me to concur with all you skeptics: sea level rise is dubious.
I’ll admit that it’s a pretty good trick to determine trends by anecdote–sort of like reporting T trends through personal experience–especially in places where the tide commonly ranges 30 feet. Moreover there are plenty of complications: northern seas may rise while southern seas do not due to ice loading and unloading–the relative centers of gravity of the lithosphere and cryosphere migrate, and the hydrosphere centers around their average. So that decreasing southern sea level could be explained by ice disappearing from Antarctica if it were not for the LOD constraints. And however we might appeal to core/mantle coupling, as the decades pile up with no increase in LOD such an appeal becomes ever more desperate.
While it might seem reasonable to suppose a causal correlation between T and sea level there are at the very least complications to the assumption. For one, formation and melting of sea ice (as opposed to land based ice) has no effect on sea level. For another, as the ice cores reveal, Milankovitch Cycles precede T and CO2 by roughly 5000 years, and the lag is best explained as due to ice sheet response. This explanation in turn suggests that it is ice sheet extension that determines T and not the reverse, at least on a millennial scale. In other words, there is a millennial correlation between sea level and T but it is one of T caused by ice melt as may be measured by sea level, not T forcing sea level, as might still be feasible in the short term. But a further complication, while sea level is proportional to ice volume melted, T forcing is relative to ice area melted, including any recent feedback due to diminished polar ice.
So it is marvelous indeed when proxy sea level dovetails with proxy T. It could prove only one thing: all current sea level rise is steric. But that seems about as likely as the reliability of this sea level proxy. –AGF
with 100,000 km grids I’m sure North Carolina covers the globe …
A bad statistical method used twice won’t make it good.
Hugh Pepper says:
June 21, 2011 at 1:10 pm
“In time more studies will be done using similar methodologies, and these will either confirm or disconfirm the recent findings.”
You can confirm or disconfirm hypotheses. However, Mann does not deal in hypotheses. Probably to avoid the old disconfirmation problem. If you look at his work carefully, there is not one hypothesis in it. All he does is take recorded numbers or record a few himself, in this case tidal gauge readings, and then, with no explanation, associate them with some proxy whose nature he does nothing to explain. All he has ever produced is just associations between series of numbers. He never explores the hypotheses needed to explain the use that he makes of proxies. He just grabs a set of proxies, assumes they are good to go, and he is off to the races. In the case of the original hockey stick, Briffa discovered that his tree ring proxies were misbehaving. After hiding the decline, neither Mann nor Briffa attempted to discover the cause of that misbehavior. Finding the cause means formulating and confirming some physical hypotheses about that kind of tree ring. That kind of work holds no interest whatsoever for Mann or Briffa. Neither has the instincts of a scientist.
As for confirming an association between two series of numbers, neither of which has been explained through scientific hypothesis, why bother?
@Latitude… Are you saying Mann cherry picked his data? That is SHOCKING. Oh wait, my English is not very good. Shocking is the wrong word. I think “Par for the course” is what I’m looking for.
So let me get this straight…….
When the ginormous ice sheets (continental glaciers) that covered about 30% of the NH, all started melting rapidly, we saw a tremendous rate in sea level rise. The highest rate at that time was about a 9 ft. rise per century around 16,000 – 15,000 years ago.
I’m sorry, but did we eclipes that 9 ft rise this century in North Carolina, or anywhere else? Today’s rate is higher than it was then? Do we really even have those conditions on today’s Earth for that to even be possible? Ice sheets, a half mile high, stretching from New Jersey to Oregon , across Europe and beyond, are all melting away at once? The melt water coming out of the last glaciation must have been staggaring. Yet we will need more than twice those conditions to reach those zany predictions of 20 ft+ some have made for the 21 century. That has always made me chuckle.
“For the first time . . .” ? Nope. It frustrates me when ‘authorities’ proclaim such things. It only underscores their ignorance of the body of previous science. Rhodes Fairbridge did it in 1976, published in the journal Science.
Kemp11 reconstructs the sea level from 500 AD to the present, and compares this with a temperature record over the same period. I believe that earlier segments of this multiproxy temperature reconstruction are rather heavily dependent for passing “validation” tests on the inclusion of the Tiljander lakebed data series as proxies. This becomes more pronounced as one goes back from 1500, since other, shorter proxies “drop out”.
I wrote a note on this issue and submitted it to RealClimate, but it was refused by their commenting software.
Further thoughts as a short post at my blog, here.
Although there is another hockey stick, this paper is useful. After all, 2.1 mm / y is 0.2 m / century.
I don’t think any coastlines have much to worry about. Is that all they could pull out of their… hat?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/20/manns-new-sea-level-hockey-stick-paper/#more-41951
Then we have the CU data indicating 0.4 mm / y rise more recently.
http://sealevel.colorado.edu/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/25/update-on-the-cu-sea-level-page-status/
It will be hard to back up predictions of sea level rise in the meter plus range this century.
Jim G
You are correct – I am into Astronomy in a big way. I believe to understand earth weather/climate we also need to understand the cosmic forces at play here. BTW, good stuff.
A clue to earth’s earliest water lie in ancient mineral grains called ZIRCONS, some of which date to 4.38 billion years old. Zircons preserve the isotopes 18-oxygen and 16-oxygen. When sedimentary minerals form in liquid water they tend to favor 18-O over 16-O in their crystal lattice. To cut to the chase zircons point to oceans on earth before 4.4 billion years ago. As you well know earth and a Mar sized planet collided with earth creating the moon which would have boiled the planet. Having said that however, science has yet to discover the the source of earth’s water from comets who are water rich but lack the chemistry of earth’s water with only about half the hydrogen-to-deuterium ratio. New research of two asteroids relatively close to the sun we couldn’t see until lately, believe it or not, were found to be covered in dust yet having a rather large water content. At this time unfortunately due to the outer layer of dust on both asteroids science has been unable to measure the isotope ratio. I do think I see two targets for the future asteroid missions.
Which leads me to question how Hansen can possibly measure ocean levels to the millimeter when science has no idea of the earth’s water in its mantle or its oceans. Keeping in mind my earlier post on the wild estimates of earth sized oceans in the earth’s mantle ranging from 10 sized oceans down to a bit over one earth sized ocean.
The “inner earth” or mantle may contain five times as much total water as the oceans. See attached link. Is it possible that humans might just not have all the answers regarding water on this planet? How much is there, where is it and how do levels change? It’s arrogant to pick two spots in NA and make the kind of conclusions that were drawn.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/03/0307_0307_waterworld.html
Wil, not to mention the possibility that the Earth receives as significant in-fall of water, just as it does of dust.
Cynic Larry’s stoopid question of the day: Will we plebs ever be allowed to see the RAW tidal gauge data from NC? Or if we say, “Pretty please,” will someone higher up on the food chain pity us, and throw us a bone, in the form of ADJUSTED tidal gauge data? (No, I have not read Mann’s recent paper.)
Another concern: cherry picking. Perhaps Mann looked at tidal gauge data from lots of places, before settling on the subset that confirmed the foregone conclusion. I’d love to see his notebooks. Would these be subject to subpoena?
Who exactly are the supposedly divided climate researchers? Three of the four quotes in the OP don’t even relate to Mann’s paper. The remaining one says “This study is therefore not suitable at all to make predictions,” I think even Mann himself would agree with that – it doesn’t try to make predictions.
John B says: “Who exactly are the supposedly divided climate researchers? Three of the four quotes in the OP don’t even relate to Mann’s paper. The remaining one says “This study is therefore not suitable at all to make predictions,” I think even Mann himself would agree with that – it doesn’t try to make predictions.”
Because it can’t. Any predictions made using Mann et al’s methodology would fail miserably.
LarryD
We do know the planet is constantly receiving dust particles on a daily basis. How much may contain traces of water is not known at this time – however we did not know the earth was round not so long ago either.
The methodology in this paper is more than a little suspect.
Take a core, try to date foraminifera planckton found in it that only grow in tidal pools and try to estimate sea level (to the 0.5 mms/year) from this.
Sorry, that is even a smaller sea level rise per year than the size of the foraminifera themselves. If sea level went up and down, they would be all mixed up in the core. If sea level is going down and then goes back up, your core is completely contaminated. The method can’t possibly be accurate.
Its like the tree-rings in bristlecone pine trees which are a complete mess and depend on what part of the tree was alive at different times which also overlap each other.
Cross-section of a live bristlecone pine tree.
http://www.rmtrr.org/images/bcp.jpg
Latitude said: “Mann’s sea level paper conveniently stops before sea level rise stops.’
Is anyone surprised? The original hockey stick had three major flaws, limited number of proxies, bad math, and he hid (actually truncated) the decline in the proxies. This paper so far has two of those flaws but we have yet to see his mathematics. It looks like the same old Mann sham. He has learned nothing from his previous screw ups.
Wil says @4:49 – however we did not know the earth was round not so long ago either.
And you were doing so well up to this!
Off-topic news tip for those who haven’t seen it yet:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2011/jun/21/greenhouse-gas-targets-eu-vote
The EU Parliament is getting ready to vote a stiffer CO2 reduction target, and the Conservative British members of that group will vote against it. Their votes may be enough to stop the move.
Article also talks about Janus Lewandowski, a major EU official who has turned into a real skeptic, and is using his budgetary influence to slow down the EU’s slide.
These are real changes in the headquarters of Gaian power!
Looks like yet another reason why Dr. Muller won’t read this Mann’s papers.
N. Carolina???
Sea level is such a very, very, very complicated thing:
Sea:
-Thermal Expansion (Possibly negligible at shore where continental shelf is shallow)
-Redistribution of the Earths water masses (Over many, many decades)
-Migration and Fluctuation of Currents (When the Gulf Stream is stronger, less water slackens to the coast…and vice versa).
-Changes in Atmospheric Pressure (ie the NAO)
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/07/hightides/
-Eustatic change. (Really? Show me what “icecaps” are melting to have a more than negligible effect?)
Land:
-Isostatic Rebound
-Soft Sediments (river deltas and barrier islands of sand)
-35 Million Year Old Meteor impact crater nearby
And more….
Complicated, huh?
Certainly infinitely more complicated than Schmid’s pathetic, spineless account in the AP “Science” article.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Greg, Spokane WA says:
June 21, 2011 at 7:02 pm
Looks like yet another reason why Dr. Muller won’t read this Mann’s papers.
N. Carolina???
=============================
What is your implication here?
Are you saying North Carolina is not important?
Actually, Greg (in Spokane) you are making a cut against one of the most important and geopolitical states in the entire nation.
You know….a banking capital and one of the highest concentrations of high-tech on the east coast.
What the hell did you mean by your comment “N. Carolina?”
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
The North Carolina coast is sinking, see
http://www.ecu.edu/cs-admin/news/inthenews/archives/2005/10/Charlotte-Observer-NC-Coast-a-concern.cfm
at a rate of 8 inches per century.
This study uses a sinking rate of 1 mm /year, or about 4 inches per century.
is this a problem?
Is not the coast of North Carolina sinking due to the rebound farther north due to the loss of mass as the Ice Age glaciers melted? I thought this was well recognized by geologists.
This is a kind of repeat of mine from Dr. Curry’s site. Permit me to point out Cosquer’s Cave. http://www.culture.gouv.fr/culture/archeosm/en/fr-cosqu1.htm The entrance is now 37 meters below sea level. The paintings on the wall, above sea level, needed to have happened at a time when that entrance was also above sea level. So here we have, in recorded history, what I suspect is a menu. These are pictures of food. People – this is what sea level rise looks like.
37 meters below sea level. Are we agreed that this kind of sea level shift has a global component to it?
And we’re worried about the survivability of the barrier islands? They’re here today! They were there then. They’ve been through millenia of sea level change hell on earth and yet here they stand. And we’re worried about 1/16″ inch/year sea level rise?
I have a retirement to fund – I can’t be thinking about the impact of a sea level rise that cannot keep up with the rate of growth of my toenails.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t subsidence rates calculated from comparison of land and sea levels? Isn’t Mann in the end measuring that during last 2000 years, sea level was at … sea level?
Mention has been made previously of the British Admiralties sterling effort a couple of centuries ago in mapping the world. The low low tide dry rocks were engraved and all the information about them in their thousands world wide is available. A targetted mission to only a few around the world would prove most helpful in determining the change or lack of in the last 200 years. Perfectly acceptable science photographically available and proven beyond a doubt any rise or fall. Unless the rocks in Australia are growing like coral, nothing much has changed down under. Perhaps a university doing marine research PHD material.
Looking at the coast of North Carolina it is sinking. The vast accumulations of sand, evident in the barrier islands etc. are evidence of this. Sea level rise here will be shown to be very high, compared to an area of zero sink. Actual sea level rise here will be roughly the same as everywhere else, within the confines of the geode.
As they say in real estate: “Location, Location, Location”. I did a bit of digging back in December 2009 when the Copenhagen gathering was the big issue, and we were all going to be inundated with seawater. My findings were rather interesting, to say the least! Within a 140km-per-side triangle, I had sea levels rising, falling, and staying the same – all with NOAA data!
If you can’t get consistency in a small geographical region, then how can you extrapolate two data sets to cover the world?
shanghai dan,
NOAA will be providing arks.
If it is Mann-made, it is human, humans are known to err.
I’m not surprised by this new “error”.
Wil says:
June 21, 2011 at 2:12 pm
Jim G
“You are correct – I am into Astronomy in a big way. I believe to understand earth weather/climate we also need to understand the cosmic forces at play here. BTW, good stuff.”
Me too. Have an 8″ SCT and a 4″ with some pretty good comet photos and some not so good planet shots and a few deep sky. Been too cloudy here for months now to do much. Must be that global warming . Very unusual for this area which averages about 270 sunny days per year (high desert). Any good publications you would suggest? I receive Astronomy and Sky & Telescope but they usually have a few good articles and lots of garbage as well as the mandatory AGW bow now and then.
Regards
Mr. Burns:
in the long beach ca. harbor there is an area about 2 miles in diameter where oil production caused a subsidance of about 24 feet during the period of about 1940-1950. because this was right in the middle of a navy yard the navy sued standard oil over it. (they had to massively reinforce a drydock that was about 1200×300 feet).
the oil company then started steam injection which brought some parts of the area back up 13 feet where it stabilized until about 2000.
what if the screamers had used this area as a the one and only data point.
would the screamers be having every one west of the mississippi building house boats.
C
And here was me, thinking, that this paper will contain more sea level proxies than NC mentioned in the abstract of thi first author presented at a student conference….
I wonder, why the paper wasn’t entitled “The reconstruction of sea level in NC”?
Good luck. When you try to explain basic economics to a Progressive, they tell you that ATMs and Airport Ticket Kiosks are costing jobs. If they can’t understand basic econ and admit they are wrong with respect to the economy, how the heck are they going to admit that client science is not settled?
Anybody who has visited the coast of North Carolina has noticed that the “land” there is mobile. It’s just sand, and it moves where the wind and waves push it.
There used to be three inlets into the sounds from the ocean, now only two. At the spot where lost inlet was, of course, a measurement would appear to show that sea level had fallen, since what was once wet is now dry.
I wonder. Did Mann and his colleagues visit the coast, or did they just manipulate somebody else’s series?
I am a long-time follower of a page produced by NASA entitled “Climate Change Key Indicators” at http://climate.nasa.gov/keyIndicators/. It has a number of graphs. Some of them are a little odd, like the one showing the decline in land ice in Antarctica. It looks impressive but if instead of just graphing the decline, they graphed the actual volume, it would be completely flat to within the nearest pixel on my home computer screen.
But I’ve been noticing that the sea level graph is getting father and father from the regression line. Today, I checked back. It has always been possible to get more precise data by clicking on the link which credits the source: CLS/Cnes/Legos. Through that you could get more recent data and with another click, a nice text file of numbers to look at closely. Today, I saw a new link that read, “Download data.” Except when you click, you don’t get data, you get a complex display that doesn’t seem well related to the graph. The CLS/Cnes/Legos credit is now just text, not a link.
But what do I look like, an idiot? I went to Google and entered “CLS Cnes Legos” and behold, the old page showed up. And, wow! See for yourself: http://www.aviso.oceanobs.com/en/news/ocean-indicators/mean-sea-level/. Sea level is has gone completely off the reservation. We’re where we were three years ago. The rate is 3.23 mm/yr, whereas NASA shows 3.27 (noting that it’s 1993-2010, not 2011). But even that number is optimized. A ten-year rate would be less. A 30-year rate would be less. If you conveniently start right after Mt Pinutubo, you get something over 3.2 but every year, it gets weaker.
I wouldn’t assign motives to NASA, but it’s interesting that they removed the link to this page just when it began to show results they probably don’t want us to see.